Peter Senkbeil
Professor Emeritus
Contact
Biography
Peter Senkbeil served as Executive Vice President at Concordia University Irvine and formerly Provost. He was a faculty member in the Theatre Department from 1992-2010.
He has directed over 30 full-length plays, including Songs for a New World, Falling, Till We Have Faces, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Cherry Orchard, Much Ado about Nothing, The Iraq War Project (also co-author), Paper Wings, Cabaret, and Working.
His acting credits include Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Hiding Place, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Shadowlands.
In 2004, Dr. Senkbeil received the Excellence in Education award from the Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival.
Dr. Senkbeil served on the editorial board of Ecumenica, a journal of the performing arts, faith, and society. He is a founding member of Christians in Theatre Arts (CITA), an international arts networking organization; he served four terms on CITA’s board of directors.
His doctoral dissertation was “Faith in Theatre: Professional Theatres Run by Christians in the United States and Canada and Their Strategies for Faith-Art Integration.”
He has published articles and given presentations on Christianity and the arts, and he wrote the chapter on the arts for the book The Idea and Practice of a Christian University: A Lutheran Approach (Concordia Publishing House, 2015).
Dr. Senkbeil and his family are active members of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Orange, California.
Education
B.A. – Communication and Theatre – Concordia University, Chicago
M.A. – Theatre – Northwestern University
Ph.D. – Theatre and Drama – Northwestern University